


Ransom

by bluefeatherofhappiness (orphan_account)



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Backstory, Fic Exchange, Gen, I'm Sorry, Kidnapping, Leoniles Week 2017, M/M, Minor Violence, Not Beta Read, improper use of shibari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:32:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11739015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/bluefeatherofhappiness
Summary: A VERY LATE submission for the LeoNiles exchange 2017, my prompt was:"AU of Leo and Niles' backstory meeting where Niles kidnaps Leo or otherwise holds him hostage, and Leo ends up offering him employment somehow anyway~"





	Ransom

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Gabe (@wasteourlights) on twitter, I'm really really sorry this took me so long!   
> I've taken some liberties with the "canonical" timeline of Conquest here, specifically pulling from the audio CDs where Leo gets backhanded by Xander. 
> 
> Obviously, as I'm sure most of you who read this are aware, Niles has a fucked up backstory that is referenced to a little in this work.

Leo awoke with his head throbbing, his wrists bound, and the sour taste of a dirty rag in his mouth.

Great, he thought. Just great.

His head was still a little fuzzy about what had happened, but he knew whatever this was, it was not a good situation for a prince to be in. Leo examined his bonds. The rope was a bit coarse, and while it wasn't TIGHT- his circulation seemed to be just fine- it seemed quite secure. Leo was no expert on kidnapping, but this elaborate series of knots, using multiple pieces of rope, seemed rather wasteful. 

 

Oddly enough, his captor had left his ankles tied, but not to each other. Leo smirked. These kidnappers had to be completely incompetent to if they thought a bit of rope would cow him into sitting still. 

 

He managed to squirm onto his side and was kneeling, leaning slightly forward, when a sudden tug yanked him upwards, first smacking his forehead against the floor, then hoisting him into the air a good couple of feet off the ground. Leo swore. 

He heard a chuckling, and looked up to see a man holding the other end of the rope. Leo realized with sudden clarity that the ropes were looped around an exposed beam on the ceiling, creating a makeshift pulley. Leo swore again, this time internally.

The man strolled over casually, and spent some time out of Leo’s sight fiddling with the ropes for a few moments. Leo felt a rough hand on his ankle, and he tried to kick at the stranger, with the only result being another infuriating chuckle of amusement.

A sudden slap on the rear made Leo yelp into the rag in shock. The sensation was so startling he froze up from a mixture of embarrassment and indignation while the man looped the rope around his ankles.

There was a moment of silence, and then a pleased hum ad the man circled around Leo, as if appreciating his own work. He tipped up Leo's chin so he could look into his single eye, and removed the rag from his mouth.

"I hope you're...comfortable, _little prince_."

Leo spat in his face.

"Don't call me that.”

He wiped the spit from his face with the back of his hand and, staring Leo straight in the face, made a show of licking it off and smacking his lips.

Leo made a disgusted noise in his throat, but he could tell by his captor’s shit-eating grin that they’d gotten the response they wanted out of him.

_Gods, he’s probably some sort of pervert._

Great. Just great. He was having a really bad week.

“You look like you have something to say. Go ahead, _milord_ -“he said mockingly, “Why don’t you let me hear the sort of noises you can make with that pretty little mouth of yours?”

Leo just scowled, taking in the sight of the man standing over him, trying to imprint his image in his mind. If he somehow managed to get out of this alive, he would need to know how to describe him to the guards.

He was dirty, his shaggy hair greasy from being unwashed for gods knew how long. A visible layer of dust and dirt mingled with sweat stained his roughshod clothes- if you could call such rags ‘clothes.’ The man was probably taller than Leo (although it was hard to tell for sure since he was strung up like an Easter turkey), with a lean, sinewy body that reminded Leo of the feral dogs he’d seen roaming the streets of the capital, with a glint in his eye to match. It was a look that spoke of a life steeled from years of hunger and mistrust, a look that told Leo that any attempt to make this man see him as anything less than pig slop would be in vain.

The poor always resented the upper class. _Vilified us, eve_ n, he thought. It wasn’t _fair_. He’d never _asked_ to be born as the bastard son to a womanizing king.

What had it even given him? Food, certainly. The opportunity to read, to learn things ‘befitting his birth.’ But safety? Never. Happiness? Hardly. _And yet_ , Leo thought bitterly, _people like him hate me for it_. He wasn’t the cause for their suffering, and being the fourth in line for the throne, probably wouldn’t ever be in a position to change that. But they didn’t care. The mindless masses just struck out at whoever and whatever they could, desperate for a small taste of “justice.”

“Zero!”

A voice pulled Leo out of his self-indulgent ruminations. It was from outside the cell. The one-eyed man (Zero, Leo assumed, although that name seemed awfully fake) answered it without turning from Leo.

“Yeah?”

“You better not be doing anything permanent. We’re gonna wait a few days to see if they agree to the ransom before we start sending parts of him to the pigs in the castle. Do it too soon and he’ll die before you can have any fun with him.”

“You think I’m some _amateur_ , Seven?” Zero replied, clearly annoyed. “Torture,” he continued, looking back into Leo’s eyes, “Is a like a courtship.”

“The fuck does that even _mean?”_

“It means if you get too eager and just start shoving things in places it’s no fun.” His thumb traced around Leo’s lips. “You gotta do a little foreplay, first. Lasts longer that way.”

He smirked, and lowered his voice to just address Leo.

“Who knows, you might even enjoy yourself. I’ve met a lot of fucked up nobles back in my street days, after all, and I’ve heard your family in particular…” he chuckled darkly. “Well, I shouldn’t gossip. We’ve just met, after all.”

Leo felt the rope start to cut into his skin and grimaced. His back ached from being arched. Zero, as if sensing his discomfort, slowly crept his hands back up to the stabilizing knot, seeming to savor Leo’s impatience and pain as he slowly untied it and lowered him to the ground.

Leo failed to repress a sigh of relief upon reaching the floor, and Zero stuck out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout.

“Aw, did I hurt you?”

Leo stared at him spitefully, but said nothing.

“I hope your tolerance builds up,” he said, his mouth twisting into a scowl, “Because I have a lot in store for you, Prince Leo. I’ll see you again soon.”

“You should just kill me,” Leo muttered.

Zero froze, his hand on the doorknob.

“What was that?”

Leo spoke up.

“You won’t get any money from my family. It’d be faster for us both if you just killed me, right now.”

 _Hell,_ Leo thought, _Xander might even see it as a blessing at this point._

Leo was so busy brooding about the events of earlier that week that he didn’t even see the kick coming until the wind was knocked out of him. He tried to take a wheezing breath, but the boot came again, vicious and hard, and Leo’s intake of breath turned into a cry of pain.

He instinctively tried to curl in on himself to protect his vital organs, but he was hoisted, bodily, into the air and shoved against the cold stone wall, his toes barely able to touch the ground beneath him.

The thief, Zero, had undergone a horrifying transformation- before Leo would have called him comely, maybe even handsome, but now his face was twisted into a mask of rage. The feral quality of his person was fully apparent now, his eye narrowed almost to a slit and burning with hatred, his hands shaking even as he held Leo against the wall.

“Kill you?” Zero spat. “What, your family doesn’t love you? Oh my, your wretched palace life must be so _hard_ , little prince!”

“So what, you want me to teach them a lesson for _ignoring_ you? Get in the last word by making a villain out of me, making them _regret_ they ignored _poor little Leo_? ‘Oh, if only we’d been nicer before that awful bandit _killed_ him!’ Is that what you want?”

As he spoke, mere inches away from his face, Leo found himself staring at Zero’s mouth, the way his lips curled to reveal the flash of white teeth with such a snarl that Leo felt himself trembling slightly.

The haze of bloodlust in Zero’s eye seemed to lift a bit, and he turned his face away from Leo, as if to regain his composure. After a moment, he grit his teeth ( _those wolf-like teeth_ , Leo thought) and looked back at Leo, the flame of hatred still smoldering in his blue eye.

“You think you want to die? You know _nothing_ about suffering.”

He let Leo’s body crumple into a heap on the floor.

“But you will.”

He stood there for a moment, just staring at the floor as if in a daze, before stalking out of the room and slamming the door behind him. There was an audible click as it locked.

Leo’s sore body groaned in protest as he tried to sit himself up once again. He grit his teeth and bore through the pain.

Despite what he looked like- and what he _knew_ people thought of him- Leo had been in fights before. He was unfortunately, quite familiar with pain. That had been mostly when he was younger, though. Before he realized his scrawny body would never build into the impressive bulk that Xander, and even Camilla, had inherited from their father. Long before Corrin had come into their lives and become the favorite of everyone besides their increasingly estranged father. Thinking about his siblings again made his blood boil.

Gods, if it had just somehow been _stronger,_ or _smarter,_ if Corrin and Felicia had been _more careful,_ maybe this whole thing wouldn’t have even- _No,_ he shook his head at his own line of thought. Despite the temptation to draw a line between what happened earlier this month and what was happening now, it was pointless to think that way. The events were clearly completely independent from one another.

It was just his lousy luck that what had been almost assuredly an attempt at petty robbery turned into kidnapping. Just like it had been his lousy luck that his attempts to get his sister out of the tower father kept her cloistered in ended with her almost getting killed.

Hadn’t that vagrant- Zero- said something about a rumor about the royal family? Leo hadn’t ever been keen on court gossip- not that he had any friends at court to gossip with- but even if he had been, he was pretty sure father had taught most of the nobles long ago to keep their tongues from wagging about him or his many… indiscretions. Whatever it was, it was probably a bunch of nonsense. Stupid lies uttered by stupid people.

None of that mattered, anyway. What mattered now was escape. Even if Xander and the others didn’t notice he was missing for several days, if they sent a ransom notice to the castle, it could only end poorly for them. These men were clearly of some caliber if they had managed to get into the castle without notice, so their presence in the Nohrian underworld would be notable. Doubtless they had some sort of deal arranged with some of the seedier collectors and merchants in the capital to sell their haul to. And if that was true, it was only a matter of time before Camilla would get her stray, Beruka, to sniff out their den.

The real question is how long Xander would make them wait before rescuing him. Xander wasn’t a cruel man, but he was harsh and didn’t forgive easily. Making Leo wait for safety, to get an idea of how truly and utterly _fucked_ he was without them, would be his punishment.

 _No_ , Leo thought defiantly. _I would rather lose a few fingers to these thugs than be forced to listen to my brother’s condescending lectures, his empty words of apology for taking so long._ He’d rather die than hear his sisters laughing at him for being so helpless as to be kidnapped by mere thieves, that he was ambushed because of a nighttime stroll.

If he was Corrin, he reflected bitterly, they’d stop at nothing to get him back, and afterwards Camilla and Elise would insist on staying with him for months after the fact, clucking over him like mother hens. But he wasn’t Corrin. He was Blundering Leo, the smartest fool they knew, a “silly little boy.”

_Maybe I do want Zero to kill me._

He shook the thought from his head. He had to be proactive. He would find a way to escape, on his own if he had to. With that, Leo began to search the room for another way out.

 

Even when he wasn’t on active guard duty, Zero’s mind was full of thoughts of Prince Leo, and he couldn’t come up with a good reason why.

This wasn’t the gang’s first kidnapping, of course- they’d done this before with members of minor noble and merchant families. Usually they extorted them for some quick cash, then relocated and laid low for a while until the upper class returned to complacency, or living in the streets got particularly rough. One month they’d even occupied a small manor, eating out of the merchant’s stores and keeping them locked in their cellar until Four had been stupid enough to miss them slipping out the door and towards the city guard. That Four hadn’t lasted too long with the gang after that incident.

That was how it worked in their group. Your number indicated your place. He was Zero. Not particularly valued, beyond his skill set, but he had no illusions about his importance to the group. It was a means to an end, and Zero knew it was only a matter of time before his luck ran out and he ended up with the short straw.

That had almost happened with this most recent job, but he took what could have become a problem and turned it into an opportunity. The others had balked when they saw him climbing out of the window, not with a sack of whatever valuables could be found, but an unconscious person thrown over his shoulder. He hadn’t known at the time Leo was one of the princes, but it wasn’t particularly difficult to figure it out. At that point it was only natural that ransom was the next step.

Had their stations and situations been different, Zero reflected, he wouldn’t mind having Leo for his own selfish purposes. He was pretty, fair skinned, a girlish face, and almost petulant pout. He would be the type of inexperienced boy Zero would pick out in a brothel for a fling. His kind was rare in the streets of Nohr; He was like one of the ripened peaches rich folk coated in wax to artificially preserve their freshness, almost shamefully indulgent in their attempt to prolong the inevitable. During their stay at the merchant’s manor, Zero had relished the sensation of scraping the wax away with his dirty nails, peeling it away like bedclothes, before biting into the succulent flesh within. Fruit not easily gotten was always the sweetest.

But what the prince said bothered him.

_“It’d be faster if you just killed me right now.”_

He’d lost his cool, back then, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. It all had seemed so…wrong. Normally this sort of role reversal would have thrilled him. But when he heard those words and saw the prince’s hollow eyes, it just filled him with rage. He felt everything he’d ever experienced in his miserable, pathetic life boil over, all at once. Zero had felt similar rages before, looking in on the houses of happy families and comfortable manors of wealthier Nohrian citizens, but this rage had a note he wasn’t used to inside of it- fear.

He was no stranger to fear. If you lived as long as he had on the street and you didn’t know fear, you were an idiot. But this fear wasn’t the same as seeing you were being followed by a group of urchins whose space you invaded upon, or the numbing fear that this winter might be your last, that you’d die with your belly empty and your skin frostbitten. This was somehow- inexplicably- deeper; a creeping dread. A dread of what, he couldn’t quite place. But it was enough to make him hesitate going back in there for too long.

It had been a few days after their first encounter that it happened. Zero slid the prince his daily ration of hard, somewhat mouldy bread and mostly-clean water. Leo tore into it hungrily, no longer caring at this point if it had been drugged or poisoned, as he had the first time. Zero knew the feeling. Hunger was omni-present for him, a phantom pain like the ones he felt in his empty eye socket every now and then. He imagined that for someone who hadn’t felt hunger often it was probably something unbearable.

Zero was turning to leave when the prince’s voice stopped him.

“You said, before-” his voice cracked slightly from disuse. He cleared his throat and began again. “You said that there were stories about my family. What kind of stories?”

Zero felt himself grinning rakishly at the prince.

“We commoners often have lots of these sorts of stories. They aren’t very favorable, I’m afraid.”

“I…I would like to hear them, all the same,” Leo said, hesitantly.

 _Good._ Zero had been planning to tell him whether he wanted to or not, and told him as much. Leo grimaced.

“Hmmm, where should I begin…?” Zero wondered aloud, pretending to be deep in thought about the litany of trashy gossip he’d heard over the years about the royal family. “Oh! I know. Let’s start with your dear sisters, shall we?”

“The eldest sister, Camilla, is supposedly a real hellcat, with tits like a cow.”

Leo couldn’t help but nod in confirmation as he bit off a hunk of his bread crust.

“Oh, it’s the truth, then? _Interesting_. What about your younger sister, any truth to the opinion she’s actually a wood nymph?”

Leo snorted.

“Impossible. Nothing grows in Nohr What about Xander?”

“According to my sources, the crown prince is an unfeeling automaton, with the disposition of an executioner.”

Leo laughed mirthlessly.

“Well, that’s basically right.”

There, in his eyes again, was that flash of…what? Anger? He needed to press harder on this, then. But in good time.

“Your father, on the other hand, is well-known for his _appetites._ ”

The prince rolled his eyes, as if he’d heard this one a thousand times.

“Then there’s the rumor about the third princess,” Zero continued, watching Leo’s face carefully, “But that’s a load of fairy-tail garbage. Even in a family like yours there wouldn’t be someone allowed to just do nothing all day.”

The prince nodded, a little too quickly, and took a sip of his water.

“My personal theory,” Zero continued, “is that she’s some sort of pet whore your family keeps around for group service.”

Leo coughed and spluttered.

_I may have struck close to the truth, hm?_

“Your reaction says it all, prince. So there _is_ a pillow princess locked away in a tower somewhere? How does that work with your other sisters, hm? You share?”

Leo gagged.

“You’re disgusting.”

“Oh, right, says the boy owns one-fourth of a family whore.”

“She’s not-” Leo stopped suddenly, looking hesitant to say more.

Zero grinned. There was no way this kid could talk his way out of this without giving _something_ up. If the royal snobs don’t want to pay for their brother, maybe, just maaaybe, they would pay some money to keep some lips sealed about certain secrets.

More importantly, Zero thought, he got to mess with him.

The prince was clearly out of his depth socially. He gave the impression a lot of young well-read men gave- that they were smart, but if taken out of an academic setting and put into a room of common folk, they became almost unable to communicate. All of Zeros experience with well-read young men was almost entirely transactional, of course, so it usually suited his purposes just fine.

Leo seemed to make up his mind about what he was going to say.

“There is another princess. But she’s my sister, and even thinking about any of my siblings _remotely_ in that way makes me want to vomit. And I’m sure they would say the same.”

“What a boring response,” Zero sighed, feigning disappointment. “But I’m not surprised you would say such a thing disgusts you. After all, there’s another rumor I heard about you.”

Silence, but a clear look on Leo’s face that he was interested in hearing it. _It’s like he’s eating out of the palm of my hand_.

“Stories say,” Zero lied, “you like taking it up the ass. And you’re not too fond of women.”

He looked toward Leo with a grin to see if he gave any sort of reaction.   
Nothing.

How disappointing.

After a moment, Leo mumbled something unintelligible.

“You’re gonna have to speak up. I’m a bit hard of hearing.”

(He wasn’t.)

Leo spoke up, his face turning pink.

“Well…it’s not…something I…” He looked down and away, avoiding Zero’s gaze.

Zero had to restrain himself from practically purring.

This would be so easy. He could turn this boy to butter in his hands, and not a single secret would be free from him. Then…he would know. He would see the strange feeling he got about the prince was just nerves. He was a spoiled, rotten brat, and he could prove it. Strip him bare and expose him for the shallow, superficial creature he was. Zero stalked towards him, seamlessly shifting into a kneeling position in front of the sitting prince.

Zero gave what he hoped came across as a coy smile, reaching over to Leo for a gentle caress of his face. Leo leaned into his touch like an attention starved kitten, eyes shut, his breath hitching slightly when he reached a hand under the front of his shirt.

Gods, Zero thought, looking at Leo’s slightly quivering frame, he had been right about one thing, at least- he was _divine._ The prince was tense as a bowstring, responding to every one of his touches with an ardor he’d never seen.

Zero leaned in and kissed Leo’s lily-white throat, trailing kisses up his collarbone to the side of his face.

“Aren’t you afraid?” he whispered in the prince’s ear. “I’ll stop if you want.”

Leo whimpered softly, as Zero pulled back to look in his eyes.

When Zero had been a boy, one of his teachers, a middle-aged whore who called herself “Charity,” had told him that you could tell someone’s true character by the look in their eyes when you pleasured them. Good, bad, lonely, angry- it all came out in the eyes and the act.

Zero had called her an idiot who made up excuses for horny old men.

But here, in the prince’s eyes…in Leo’s eyes…it was like a roadmap. It was all so clear. The pain, the loneliness, the desperate, consuming need to be _needed_. A need to be desired, to be admired, to feel _approval_. Zero silently thanked a god he didn’t believe in that he only had one eye, because if he could see this in Leo, there was no doubt someone might be able to see his life in his.

“Please…” Leo whispered hoarsely. “Please don’t stop.”

A tear fell down Leo’s cheek. He raised a shaking hand to Zero’s chest, squeezed his pectoral. Zero, shaking his head, pulled away.

“This…isn’t right.”

“What? No, I….I want this.”

Leo tried to kiss him, but he avoided it. Zero started to untie the ropes around him.

“Come on. I’ll take you out of here. You can go home.”

Tears were streaming down Leo’s face now.

“What….what are you…did I do something wrong?”

Zero shook his head. It had been him who was wrong.

Zero threw his cloak over Leo, and held his hand tight as he lead him through the city’s tunnels.

“Wait,” Leo said, after they had managed to reach a more populous area of the underground. “I know a way back from here.” He didn’t let go of Zero’s hand.

 “What are you…?”

Leo answered without hesitation.

“You’re coming with me.”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

Leo stopped abruptly and turned to face him for the first time since they escaped the hideout.

“Do you like being a thief?”

“What?”

“I said, do you _like_ being a thief? Do you enjoy living like this?”

Zero shrugged.

“It’s a living. Most of the time.”

“You know that your gang won’t take you back, right? They’ll figure out you helped me escape.”

Shit. He hadn’t thought about that detail.

“Come with me. You can be one of my personal guard. You can be…” Leo’s hand hovered over his cheek for a moment for he decided it would be all right to touch him. “You can be with me.”

Leo pulled his hand back, suddenly self-conscious.

“I won’t force you, though. It has to be a choice you make.”

Zero (or, he thought to himself, he supposed he was ‘the thief formerly known as Zero’) almost laughed.

“What would your family think about you hiring your kidnapper?”

“I don’t care what they think. For all they know, you just rescued me.”

So it was a choice between returning to the streets and facing the awful things he’d always known, along with angry ex-gang members, or throw his lot to the wind with Leo. It seemed like a pretty obvious choice to make.

“Sure. I’ll go.”

Leo smiled for the first time he had known him, a true smile that made Not-Zero’s heart ache.

“Okay. Come on, let’s go.”

The two of them kept walking down the tunnels, entering into the catacombs beneath the castle.

“I’ve been wondering,” Leo said, casually, “What’s your name, really? It can’t actually be Zero, right?”

Not-Zero shrugged.

“Never really had anything permanent. Why?”

“Is there a name you want me to call you?”

Not-Zero shrugged again.

“I’ll go by whatever you decide to call me. Something not awful would be nice, though.”

“How about ‘Niles’?”

Not-Zero repeated the name a few times, rolling it around on his tongue. It would work.

“Sure.”

“I love you…Niles.”

The suddenness of the statement stopped Niles in his tracks. No one had ever said that to him before.

“I love you too…Lord Leo.”

 


End file.
